From: "Bartosz Dziewoński" <matma.rex@...>
Date: 2012-04-17T05:39:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Upgrading to Ruby 1.9 - Should I? Is it painful?

W dniu 16 kwietnia 2012 22:05 użytkownik Brian Candler
<lists@ruby-forum.com> napisał:
> IME it's pretty painful, in particular if you have programs which use
> Strings, and you want to understand how they work in ruby 1.9.

As much as I admire Brian's work on documenting 1.9's String behavior,
you will be fine on 1.9 if you stick to two rules:

1. Always use UTF-8 internally. Encode your source files as UTF-8 and
add #coding: magic comments to every file. Make sure any data files
are in UTF-8 too. This will help you and everyone reading your code in
the future, not just Ruby.
2. Always immediately convert any incoming data to UTF-8. Sensible
frameworks should already do it for you, but mind it if rolling your
own. Use code like File.open('asd.txt', 'r:utf-8') if necessary. (E.g.
if it doesn't work without the utf-8 part.)
(3.) Optionally, if possible, switch to an operating system that is
UTF-sane in the console. (Windows, I'm looking at you...) (Although my
primary environment is Windows and I have no troubles with it, save
for occasionally having to encode stuff as CP852 for printing to
console.)

-- Matma Rex